Loyalty
by astateofmind
Summary: He swore to be loyal, and he was until the very end. The life of Jeremiah Gottwald.


**Hello. This is my first story. All comments/critiques are welcome. Thanks. I do not own Code Geass. **

_"I serve only one and that's Lady Marrianne."_

Xxxxxxx

When Jeremiah was seven years old, he watched his father lovingly place a hand on his favorite hunting hound before swiftly planting a bullet in its skull.

Jeremiah yelped when he saw the blood and cried with childish compassion when he realized what it meant.

"Why do you make such a racket, Jeremiah?"

Margrave Johan Gottwald's voice had the distinct tone of someone accustomed to issuing orders. He did not look at his son when he spoke, staring instead at the tops of the pine trees where orange sunlight was retreating into the evening.

The boiling tears that had flowed down into the boy's aristocratic collar were choking him. Sobs were his only words in response.

"You should never feel badly for this dog. Never mourn him." It was a command, but Jeremiah did not understand. Why shouldn't he be sad? It was his fault that the dog was hurt and had to be put down.

He did not realize he voiced this question until the Margrave turned and fixed his son with the unnervingly calm gaze of a hardened soldier.

"This hound gave up his life in the course of serving you. He was loyal to you, and so unwaveringly protected you." The child's eyes burned again with guilty tears but Lord Gottwald persisted on unaffected. "He died in the noblest manner any being in the world ever can: in the service of his master. Do not dishonor his sacrifice by wishing he had not made it."

With those words spoken, Margrave Johan departed the life-spattered lawn, but Jeremiah stayed stuck in place feeling very much like he had been shot too.

Xxxxxx

Before she became Margravine Susanna Gottwald, Anna Fina was a ballerina.

She was a very good dancer, but greatness – the rare synthesis of audacity and grace – always slightly eluded her. Pursuing excellence tormented, pushed, and hardened her, but it also brought joy to her otherwise colorless life.

She loved performing because it filled up a void inside her intrinsic to those who have no say in the grand scheme of their lives. Under the lights, she felt as powerful as wildfire, and she was sure that she understood something about the perfect kind of freedom. Anna knew she was a ballerina like she knew she was a woman. It was as much a part of her as a desire for food, water, or air.

However, the life of an aristocrat is one of duty, not choice, and her family name trumped her spirit. To her mother, father, and social companions, she was Susanna Pullman-Fina, daughter of a baron and heiress to a silver mine. Nothing more, or less. The world saw a Britannian lady, and ladies watched the dance from their luxurious, cellblock loges. They did not jump on the stage.

When Margrave Johan Gottwald inched his cold ring up her captured hand on the day of their arranged wedding, Anna Fina wanted to wretch, storm, and rip the world open because she knew she would never be able to dance again. Her blood boiled and heart recoiled at this fact. She felt the freedom she thought she knew laugh at her as it fled out into the sunlight, leaving her body behind, trapped in the stiff, unyielding darkness of the imperial theatre.

As the years passed, Anna's eyes, once fever bright, dulled to the color of muddy ice. When she discovered she was pregnant after a passionless night with the drunken margrave, she cried herself sick because she knew she could never love the child that was forced inside her body, and after Jeremiah was born, this proved all too true. When she looked at her son, she was reminded of all that she had been forced to give up so he could exist, and she despised him for it.

Her distain was not lost on Jeremiah. She never touched him and rarely spoke to him. Whenever the margravine glanced his way, he felt the weight of her great emptiness, and it scared him. He avoided her as much as he could and resented calling her "mother" because she was nothing of the sort. She broke his heart the day that she burned the picture he drew her, and afterwards was determined that if he should ever love a woman, she would be the exact opposite of everything that Margravine Gottwald was.

Xxxxxx

"Very good today, sir," Jeremiah's fencing instructor said while bowing and moving to escort Jeremiah off the training floor.

Jeremiah scowled. He was not sure if the man was being sincere or sycophantic. While it was true that he had moved a bit more elegantly during this practice session than at previous ones – the time when he almost fell on his own saber he was sure would haunt him for the rest of his life – but he also knew that even after three years of practice he was only a passable fencer.

Sure, he could hold a sword properly, but it was not an 'extension of his arm' like his instructor always insisted that it should be. But honestly, he had never seen anyone wield a blade that naturally, not even the master fencers, nor did he think that he ever would.

As his manservant made to hand him a bottle of water and a towel, a bevy of shouts, some joyous, some not, sailed up to the high ceiling of the training hall. Intrigued, Jeremiah turned around and took in a crowd of teenagers jostling to get a view of the dual going on in the center of the room.

"She is losing! She is losing! Damn it! I cannot believe it!" A muscled, freckle-faced boy said to his equally incredulous companion, as they stomped toward where Jeremiah was standing at the edge of the floor.

"What is going on over there?" Jeremiah asked them. He hid his shaking hands behind his back. He knew these two because their duals more often than not ended in fistfights.

The pair stopped and directed strained smiles at him. Jeremiah may have been younger and smaller than these boys, but he outranked them in society, and they knew that, which made for an awkward and unfriendly atmosphere as one of them replied, "A dual between the new commoner protégé of Baron Ashford and Elia Ebony." He swallowed hard and spat out, "Ebony is going to lose."

Involuntarily, Jeremiah's eyes widened. Lady Elia Ebony was the national fencing foil champion for her age division, and that an unknown commoner was beating her was nothing short of scandalous. He had to see this.

He strode away from the boys and pushed himself into the multitude. Through a gap in the crowd, he saw two teenage girls tensely poised attacking and parrying back and forth on balanced feet. Their foiled blades responding instantly to every twitch of their hands.

After a few tense moments of trying to fake each other out, Ebony stepped forwards quickly and lunged, but the Ashford protégé immediately parried and went on the attack. The clashes of weapons sounded like rain on steel. Ebony was ruthless driven backwards, but stood her ground and forced the protégé to parry. The point continued on for a few more seconds until an attempted feint from Ebony gave her opponent open access to her chest, and then it was over, as the Ashford protégé lunged and drove the foil into a spot right above her heart.

The match was over and the crowd let out their collective breaths with a thunderous noise as they cheered or lamented the defeat of the Britannian Royal Youth Fencing Club's resident champion.

Jeremiah could not see the girls anymore, as the window he had been viewing the match through had closed up, but he would never forget the sight of them moving back and forth more gracefully than anything he had imagined to be possible.

That Ashford protégé was something. Astounding.

Elia Ebony was supposedly one of the best in the world, and yet some unnamed girl had the bravery to challenge her and come out with a win. Jeremiah could not help but admire that girl's courage and skill and realized that he may have just seen someone whose sword was an extension of her arm.

Xxxxxxx

The gods no longer existed in Britannia. Science ousted them long ago. After all, stories did not win wars, so the tomes that were once worshiped by great and forgotten peoples of the past were thus relegated to trivial picture books on the cluttered bedside tables of children.

Generations of sons and daughters of the Gottwald family had been told the tale of Aeneas. As his city burned, Aeneas driven by fate led the remains of his people on a journey to a new home. Defeating monsters and madness and abandoning his lover, he followed the past set out for him by the golden goddess Venus to heroism and beyond.

Jeremiah had always identified with Aeneas, but he loved the idea of Venus, the one who made destiny possible.

The Gottwald motorcade glided through the gates of the Imperial Alexandrian Academy to drop its' liege lord off for his first year. As Jeremiah got out of the car and looked up at the stone-cold facade of the academic hall, he felt terribly, pathetically small.

At least at home, miserable as it was, he felt the safety of his position. However, this place with it jet black columns and dark gray doors which towered above adults like eager waves seemed determined to strip its students of any ideas about their comfort, security, and importance.

Jeremiah knew the academy was a necessary stepping-stone towards becoming the man he wanted to be, but observing this building that seemed determined to strike fear into the hearts of children made him nervously wonder how any bright future could emerge from a place so determined to be dark.

Clamping down on his panic, he closed his eyes and focused on the warmth of the sun at his back. Internalizing it, Jeremiah knew for a perfect moment that Venus was protecting him.

He gathered his courage and walked into the grand maw of the academy.


End file.
